Okay, after burning time on this I have some more news.
Yes, it's a legit emu built from the original game source code, inclusive of all of the Issue updates to when the game was shut down, as well as the Beta material that the devs were working on before they were given their pink slips. This includes stuff like the Sentinel archtype and Radiation Melee, etc.
Some dude named Leandro was supposedly given the source code by a source formerly with the NCSoft devs. It's a rumor so I'm not sure I buy it. What I do know is that the dude just recently released all the code material that he had in a public fashion. A team of coders jumped on it and less than 2 days had a test server up, which is what people were streaming today.
Character creation was working, including capes, wings, particle color choices, all of it. It's the same client the game used right up until the plug was pulled. Combat was working the exact same as retail. Experience was being earned in the same fashion. The sewers were working and door missions were 'kind of' working - it was causing issues. It looks like it will be several weeks before a full City of X is going, but all of the content is there. Praetorians, Heroic and Villain sides, etc.
Here's the discord. All of the info from the emu team and instructions to get game material are there on the announcements --
https://discord.gg/MXzaV5